Gasoline mowers have been used extensively to address lawn care needs. Unfortunately, gasoline mowers have numerous disadvantages. More particularly, internal combustion engines produce significant emissions and pollutants into the air. In addition, they require several fluids to operate, which over time, can result in a leakage of harmful fluids into the environment. Further, internal combustion engines require mechanisms, such as a choke to address cold-starts.
Electric mowers have been introduced to address many of these issues. Unfortunately, current electric mower designs include numerous disadvantages. More particularly, many require use of an AC voltage power cord, which severally limits their range. Other current electric mowers utilize batteries (e.g., lead acid, etc.) that have low power to weight ratios, do not maintain a near constant voltage throughout the duration of battery state of charge to provide consistent, rather than rapidly declining, mower performance. Such batteries also are prone to leaking acid and cannot sustain a charge when left unused for a prolonged period of time. Such batterers are often heavy and not configured to be removable except during replacement due to failure. As such, once the battery is depleted, the mower must be parked and the battery recharged before mowing can resume.
Other issues related to current electric mowers include overheating of the electric motors due to the ineffectiveness of shaft mounted mechanical cooling fans and overheating of other electronics utilized to operate the mower due to poor air flow. Current electric mowers also suffer from oversensitive steering controls, which provide “jerky” or abrupt steering responses, making the mower difficult and unpleasant to operate. Further, when operating current mowers under heavy load, such as when cutting thick grass, the cutting blades may not be able to spin fast enough to consistently cut the grass, this requires an operator to either mow the area again or to manually select a lower gear prior to cutting thick grass.